All movement of field artillery was done with limbers. Guns, caissons, battery forges and wagons were all fastened to a lim-
ber. None, under ordinary circumstances, moved independent-
ly. A limber was an ammunition box mounted on an axle between two wheels, with a forward projecting pole, to which the team was hitched. Underneath and at the rear of the limber was a bent iron piece called the pintle. At the end of the gun trail or at the tip of a short pole on the caisson was an iron piece, pierced through, called the lunette. The gun trail was lifted and the hole in the lunette dropped over the pintle, making the piece and the limber a four-wheeled unit. The piece was joined to the limber at a pivot, giving the unit a short turning radius.

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The capacity of a healthy horse to pull a load was affected by a number of factors. Chief among these was the nature of the surface over which the load was being hauled. A single horse could pull 3,000 pounds 20 to 23 miles a day over a hard-paved road. The weight dropped to 1,900 pounds over a macadamized road, and went down to 1,100 pounds over rough ground. The pulling ability was further reduced by one-half if a horse carried a rider on its back. Finally, as the number of horses in a team increased, the pulling capacity of each horse was further reduced. A horse in a team of six had only seven-ninths the pulling capacity it would have had in a team of two. The goal was that each horse's share of the load should be no more than 700 pounds. This was less than what a healthy horse, even carrying a rider and hitched into a team of six, could pull, but it furnished a safety factor that allowed for fatigue and losses.

John Gibbon finished the war as a major general in the Union Army. Before the war, he had served as an instructor at West Point and had written a textbook called The Artillerist's Manual that was used by cadets at the academy. In his textbook, Gibbon described what was desired in an artillery horse: "The horse for artillery service should be from fifteen to sixteen hands high….should stand erect on his legs, be strongly built, but free in his movements; his shoulders should be large enough to give support to the collar but not too heavy; his body full, but not too long; the sides well rounded; the limbs solid with rather strong shanks, and the feet in good condition. To these qualities he should unite, as much as possible, the qualities of the saddle horse; should trot and gallop easily, have even gaits and not be skittish."

Gibbon carefully described what was wanted, but horses with these qualities were not always available. Horses became scarce and stayed in short supply in areas of continuing conflict. Both North and South soon began to take horses that belonged to enemy sympathizers. This was often done not out of necessity but simply to deprive the enemy of horses.

In April 1862, Union Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs was called upon to furnish a great number of horses for the Federal Army to use on the Virginia Peninsula. Meigs wrote to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, telling him that there were horses for the taking from Southern sympathizers in the Shenandoah Valley and seeking authority to seize the animals. The authority was promptly given, with the stipulation that no horse needed for agricultural work was to be taken, even from an enemy sympathizer. In his request Meigs pointed out, "A horse for military service is as much a military supply as a barrel of gunpowder or a shotgun or rifle."

At the start of the war, the Northern states held approximately 3.4 million horses, while there were 1.7 million in the Confederate states. The border states of Missouri and Kentucky had an additional 800,000 horses. In addition, there were 100,000 mules in the North, 800,000 in the seceding states and 200,000 in Kentucky and Missouri. The disparity in the distribution of the mule population somewhat evened out the number of draft animals available for all purposes. The South furnished–involuntarily–many horses to the North. Most of the fighting was done on Southern soil, and the local horses were easily seized by Northern troops. While Confederates had opportunities to take Northern horses during Robert E. Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania and upon the occasional raids into Northern territory, the number taken was small compared to the thousands commandeered by Union troops, who occupied large areas of the South for several years.

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